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Throwback artists head to Savannah for BandWagon poster, record fest

Methane's Robert Clyde designed the BandWagon-centric cover of Thursday's DO.

Methane's Robert Clyde designed the BandWagon-centric cover of Thursday's DO.

Fifteen years ago, an event pairing band posters with vinyl records would have been your run-of-the-mill rummage sale — a bunch of Baby Boomers sweeping out the corners of their attics and garages, hoping to recoup enough cash to fill their kids’ Christmas stockings with Circuit City gift cards.

Fast forward to today, and everything’s flipped. The LP has lobotomized the CD. The letterpress has made the Laser Jet inept. Circuit City — sadly? — is no more.

In short, “what’s old is new again,” says Mark McDevitt, co-president of Georgia-based design outfit Methane Studios, which hit last year’s Savannah BandWagon festival and is returning to the Hostess City this weekend for round two. The event’s organizers bill it as “a weekend celebration of poster design and collectible vinyl,” two things that pair perfectly, McDevitt says.

“I think people like the fact that these are limited-edition, hand-pulled objects. They have more of a tactile and personal feel to them.”

Dan Ibarra of Minnesota-based poster factory Aesthetic Apparatus, another of this year’s participants, shares that sentiment.

“There’s a direct correlation between the media that we use — be it books or music — and kind of how we experience culture has become so digital and lost all tactile sensation,” Ibarra laments, “that over the last 10 years people have definitely adopted crafting and reintroducing the limited, handmade object into their lives.

“As far as music is concerned, concert posters have taken up the slack where music packaging lost its desirable aspects.”

Ibarra sees that movement as representative of an increasingly DIY sentiment that’s jumped from indie to mainstream American artistry. But though many of the implements it embraces — screenprinting, grooved vinyl, analog recording — are throwbacks to earlier eras, its vision is forward-looking.

“We’re trying to regain control of the media and the tools.”

Visualizing music

At East Point’s Methane, McDevitt and co-president Robert Lee — who designed the cover of this week’s DO — have been driving the cultural revisioning since 1998.

Incidentally, one of their biggest poster clients, Dave Matthews Band, hit its mainstream peak selling compact discs in the mid-’90s, before the DIY turnaround. But the desire of such musicians to pay homage to the roots of music packaging — when album covers like “Abbey Road” were so bright as to brand a generation’s consciousness — helped propel their business to the forefront.

“Records are all about visuals,” Lee says. “You see the cover before you hear the music.”

Methane’s screenprinted band posters — its clients now include Iron and Wine, Andrew Bird, Phish and the Grammy-winning Black Keys — produce the same effect.

“It’s a great way for the viewer to get some insight into what the music is about.”

Seeing how it’s made

In Madison, Wisc., Ibarra and Aesthetic Apparatus got started about the same time as Methane — 1999.

“It began as a hobby and inadvertently turned into a business” a few years later, Ibarra says. It was “something to do to be able to get away, to go into a dank basement and screenprint till one in the morning.”

Now based in Minneapolis, Aesthetic Apparatus serves musicians from The Kills to Dan Deacon.

“Our studio is built pretty much on rock posters,” Ibarra says. “I think the reputation that precedes us is that we’re first and foremost a poster shop.”

That label will fit well here in Savannah, where BandWagon has recruited Aesthetic Apparatus to show students from the Savannah College of Art and Design the tricks of the trade.

“We are there the first day,” he says, “doing an Aesthetic Apparatus lecture. We’re happy and lucky to be doing what we’re doing.”

Printmaking workshops are one small piece of BandWagon’s puzzle. This year, the festival is bringing 23 of the nation’s leading poster designers — including Aesthetic Apparatus and Methane — to show and sell their work.

That’s paired with the Savannah Record Fair, one of the Southeast’s largest and most well-respected vinyl expos, where visitors can purchase music to energize the artwork for sale.

It starts March 1 with Aesthetic Apparatus’ presentation and runs through March 4, when the dealers will pack up their posters and records and hit the road.

But not before sharing with Savannah a decidedly old-school lesson, one that’s dear to a city founded in 1733.

“We just don’t really know how anything is made anymore,” Ibarra notes, “or who made it or why.

“Being able to stand in front of the human being who touched that poster, from their brain to your hand — no middle man, foreign distributor or offshore driller involved — makes it culturally valuable.”

Of course, there’s also BandWagon’s element of surprise.

“It’s a very interesting overlap of music nerds, craftspeople, artists and beer drinkers, so that can lead to unintended circumstances.”